Early political career Angelle was elected at the age of twenty-five to the St. Martin Parish Police Jury, the local governing body known as the
county commission in most other states. From 2000 to 2004, Angelle served as the first parish president of St. Martin Parish after the parish adopted a home rule charter. Earlier, he worked as a petroleum land manager in Lafayette. He replaced Jack Caldwell. Angelle resigned on August 8, 2012, and he was replaced by Stephen Chustz. As Angelle resigned from the Natural Resources position, Jindal nominated him to represent
Louisiana's 3rd congressional district on the Board of Supervisors of
Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge.
Lieutenant governor As part of the interim appointment as lieutenant governor, Angelle agreed not to seek the position in the
special election held in November 2010. The vacancy occurred when
Mitch Landrieu resigned to become the
mayor of New Orleans. Angelle was a Democrat until he switched to the Republican affiliation on October 26, 2010. Both parties had attempted to recruit Angelle to run for
Louisiana's 3rd congressional district in the
2010 elections to succeed Democrat
Charlie Melancon, who ran instead for the U. S. Senate in
2010 against Republican
David Vitter, whom Angelle also opposed in the 2015 gubernatorial race. Earlier, Angelle had declined the overtures from both parties to run for Congress. Angelle officially began the duties of lieutenant governor on May 17, 2010. He temporarily relinquished the job of secretary of the Department of Natural Resources to Robert Harper but continued to serve as the governor's lobbyist to the
legislature. Angelle returned to his position in Natural Resources after his time as lieutenant governor ended.
Moratorium Rally On July 21, 2010, Angelle led a rally of over 12,000 citizens in
Lafayette's
Cajundome demanding the federal government to "Lift the Moratorium Now!" President
Barack Obama had imposed the
2010 United States deepwater drilling moratorium in the
Gulf of Mexico after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill. There, Angelle notably said, "This moratorium is not hurting the stock holders of BP, or Exxon or Chevron; this moratorium is hurting the Cheramies, and the Calais, and the Dupuis, and the Robins and the Boudreauxs, and the Thibodeauxs," referring to the negative effect on the local economy that the moratorium may have. This collapse allowed oil and gases to escape and surface. Angelle has received criticism for leaving his Department of Natural Resources position five days after the disaster began, however, it was later discovered that the sinkhole was due to months of
seismic activity that The Texas Brine Company ignored. As of October 2014, the sinkhole is still ongoing while local residents continue a legal battle with the Texas Brine Company. On September 25, 2015, Assumption Parish President, Martin Triche, stated "To suggest that Scott Angelle abandoned Bayou Corne and Assumption Parish is nothing short of completely false. Senator Vitter was not there for our residents when Scott was." Ryan Cross, Angelle's gubernatorial campaign manager said, "Scott had already made the decision he was going to run for
PSC. He jumpstarted the response and coordinated it on the ground. He was one of the first people down at the sinkhole site."
Public Service Commissioner In the 2012 PSC race, Angelle, with 213,485 votes (57.2 percent), won all thirteen parishes in District 2 to claim the seat vacated by Jimmy Field, a Baton Rouge attorney. The Democrat Forest Wright finished second in the balloting with 76,336 votes (20.5 percent), and Republican state representative Erich Ponti of Baton Rouge, trailed in third place with 43,287 ballots (11.6 percent). Two other contenders, a Republican and a No Party contender, shared the remaining 11 percent of the vote.
2015 gubernatorial campaign Angelle lost by a relatively narrow margin in the
primary to his fellow Republican,
U.S. Senator David Vitter, who took on Democrat
John Bel Edwards of
Tangipahoa Parish in the November 21 general election. Another of Angelle's opponents in the governor's race was his elected successor as lieutenant governor,
Jay Dardenne of
Baton Rouge, who finished fourth in the primary. Dardenne endorsed Edwards for the November 21
runoff election against Vitter, but Angelle refused to endorse either candidate. State Treasurer
John Neely Kennedy, himself a former Democrat, called upon Angelle to join him in endorsing Vitter to prove Angelle's credibility as a Republican. Angelle responded via spokesman, criticizing Kennedy's political history and calling him "the eternal president of the
RINO club."
2016 congressional campaign On March 3, 2016, Angelle announced his candidacy for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district, which is being vacated by Charles Boustany. Angelle polled 44 percent in the runoff contest against former
St. Landry Parish sheriff's deputy
Clay Higgins, having run best in the Lake Charles area.
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement On May 23, 2017, the
United States Secretary of the Interior,
Ryan Zinke, made Angelle the
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's fourth Director. That year, the
Gulf of Mexico produced $2.8 billion in lease and
royalty payments to the federal government. Angelle has frequently traveled to Texas and Louisiana to meet with industry executives and has encouraged them to directly call his cellphone to avoid disclosure in public records requests. Angelle's rule changes are forecast to save the oil and gas industry over $1.3 billion in
regulatory compliance costs over the next decade. The change was lobbied for by
Trent Lott and
John Breaux, and will save the industry hundreds of millions of dollars. In June 2017, Angelle doubled the time drillers are given to remove unproductive or damaged platforms. In October 2017, the Bureau responded to a 672,000 gallon oil leak from a pipeline fracture southeast of
Venice, Louisiana in the largest accident since the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In December 2017, Angelle reduced maintenance requirements on offshore platforms. That month, Angelle proposed to relax the well-control rule, which had been implemented in response to the
Deepwater Horizon explosion. Angelle's proposal would reduce
blowout preventer inspection requirements, allow operations to continue while
liftboats approach, and would save the industry $986 million in the next decade. ==Personal life==